


make treaty with the moon

by foibles_fables



Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: (AKA - Aloy isn't the only one with ~trauma), (with a hopeful ending), Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Eventual Sexual Content, F/F, Feelings Realization, Femslash, Flashbacks, Hawk and Thrush LET'S GO, POV Second Person, Talanah backstory, appearances by Hunters Lodge members (past and present), gay yearning? in MY fanfic?, more likely than you'd think!, since canon didn't highlight this parallel i'll do it myself, some Nora too, ~trash sponsoring trash~
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 13:20:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29983446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foibles_fables/pseuds/foibles_fables
Summary: In the coldness of the Moon, we accept there will be stillness, and death, and endings, until dawn comes once more; We do this because there are two halves of nature, Sun and Shadow, and to deny one is to deny the whole of things.--After Prince Itamen is delivered back to Holy Meridian, another defector from Sunfall arrives, bearing news of chaos descending during the old regime's most brutal ritual. When the upheaval's once-captive, now-pursued perpetrator is revealed, Sunhawk Talanah Khane Padish sets out to find her before they can -- to repay a debt and uphold an oath. But night wakes the phantoms of a past that's never truly laid to rest. Night brings so much newness. Night brings her back to Aloy despite the Nora, before the end of the world.
Relationships: Aloy/Talanah Khane Padish
Comments: 11
Kudos: 20





	make treaty with the moon

**Author's Note:**

> Hark! A self-indulgent canon-divergent fic approaches. This started off as a oneshot idea that hit me after I played through and realized, "huh, we never really got closure on the whole _Aloy broke the Sun-Ring_ thing, did we?" Aaaaand then it predictably spiraled. Now, this brainrot, on your screens!
> 
> This picks up the main questline and diverges post-"The Terror of the Sun" (with the Hunters Lodge, Oseram, and Sunfall optional questlines completed prior), through "The Heart of the Nora." I'm estimating 5-6 parts and an epilogue, but really, who knows?! I sure as heck don't! I don't know the meaning of the word control.
> 
> Note: geographical and temporal inconsistencies _abound_ , but only because the game did it first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen: ["Drums in The Sun-Ring (feat. Circle Percussion)" - Niels van der Leest](https://open.spotify.com/track/3QXIug2cWLKZmTE8rCrHTm?si=284104d6383d4b51)
> 
> full work playlist: [here on spotify](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1A1a52mvu3uwLy1TZdTfTa?si=ee5751d26f704bc9)

This is the cycle of things: even the longest night is eventually overcome by dawn.

When bold Sunrise emerges to cleave and conquer the darkness, all stunning triumph and trophy-gleam, its vindicated flare of daylight deserves to linger. And—for a time—it does linger. Long enough for the sharp-toothed, cold-water thrill to allow itself to be hushed into the recognition of reality. Long enough for the grumbling naysayers and outright critics to quit their petty posturing and begin to accept due change.

Long enough for tedium to take hold.

It’s a pleasant tedium, though, not one that comes with an itch. It’s the kind that glows with the satisfaction of a steadfast endeavor finally becoming realized. Duties, tasks, headaches, sighs. All welcome ends endured in the name of restoring honored recognition to the most deserving of heroes. It’s the warmth of being exactly where you set out to be, winding around and settling through your center.

But the world must remain true to its nature, that intrinsic cycle of Sun and Shadow. You’ve known the Articles of the Sun Faith since you’ve been aware of much of anything. _There are two halves_ , the Fourth declares, _and to deny one is to deny the whole of things_.

The priests sing thrice a day. Every risen Sun must set and relinquish its reign to the cold Moon.

And every coming night has a herald.

Most times, it’s the sonorous voices lifting from the old Sun-Ring—gently chanting the names of the Radiant Line, offering thanks for another day’s Light and expressing hope for renewal in the one to follow. But the evening prayer is not the only harbinger of twilight time.

You know this, too. Other cold omens of darkness have descended over you before.

Like that childhood morning, blearily waking to some unformed wrongness in the world, everything feeling cracked in two and draining, depleting, silk riven by a curved sword—Brativin suddenly looking much younger than his swaggering adolescence, all clenched fists, grinding jaw, twitching mouth, stubborn resistance against the welling tears he wouldn’t dare let fall—your father’s sorrowing eyes and rust-worn voice: _the Sun will light her passing._

Or, as a woman almost-grown. Waiting, waiting, waiting under a sweltering high noon, while the booming drums and bloodthirsty shouts echoed from once-Holy Meridian in the distance. A man with a phantom’s face, one you didn’t recognize then and can’t remember now, approaching you in a manner that looked as panicked as you felt. How he kept his anxious eyes more over his shoulder on the city than on you as he delivered that final urgent order. Words that wrenched hope away, made you flee, reckoned the long and salt-mouthed night that gathered around you and laughed— _regard, child, how the Sun can also provoke terror_.

(and here there’s always the wayward wondering: where, then, is the place for peace? If all things are cyclical, is a laid-to-rest past ever actually at your back? Or is it bound to keep shattering every forward horizon in one way or another? _He didn’t want you to die with them_ , again and again, until it bends far enough to break? You breathe it away, cleverly imagine nocking it like an arrow, and then bury it in the release of an invisible bowstring.)

So the new day must also be punctuated by the Sun’s sinking. An end must come closing in. This one’s herald happens to be the last one’s opposite; two halves, in everything. Not a stranger whose face your memory can’t fathom weaving back together, but a familiar man—one you’ve known since you were a babe in arms—interrupting your new duties with lines of frowning concern etched deep into his features.

(Ligan is always unshaken. And Ligan never interrupts.)

* * *

There’s no possibility of a real forfeiture or transition of power when your predecessor was left a feast for the boars.

That’s dramatic, maybe. Surely someone recovered his body from the Spearshafts. You don’t know and you truly, exceedingly, _painfully_ do not care. And now Ahsis Kho Javheri’s name is neatly-carved on the Hawks’ memorial—he _was_ one, after all, and died in noble pursuit of the hunt. Though you’ve let yourself be many things before, a hypocrite is not one of them.

But in your mind he can remain right where you left him, rotting in Shadow, relegated to the same oblivion he once forced upon those who carried absolute measures more honor than he ever could.

Not that a cordial acknowledgement of succession would have happened if the bastard survived that tail lash. No, there definitely would’ve been an exhausting knuckle-and-kneecap standoff instead. Ahsis loathed you, and your family’s legacy—and your audacity to be a woman, and to stand chest-to-chest with him regardless. You loathed him even more, smoldering and gnashing, every bit of his disgusting ego and prideful bigotry. Of course there’s the part about the attempted murder or his near-direct role in Tarkas’s death, too, but eventually a point is reached where all the grievances don’t need to be enumerated.

The only count of consequence is the gilded Glinthawk that now hangs from your neck—the insignia you claimed from his still-warm body. Just like the lesser pendant that came to be yours when you lifted it in a similar manner from Tarkas. It feels fitting, how you took up the mark of the Sunhawk with the same action that made you a Hawk—only this time with gratification in the place of grief.

(“Morbid, but I guess that’s the end of it,” Aloy had said after it was done, wiping Redmaw’s oil-ichor from her hands. She gave you a nonchalant shrug, like plucking items from corpses was a perfectly standard affair. She watched you slip the amulet over your head and then peer down at it, still reeling, reverent fingertips hovering over the gleaming metal. “It looks good on you.” A nod. “Much better than it did on that chuff.”

There was a streak of dirt or machine grease across one of her freckled cheekbones. As she looked at you, her pupils were still blown wide from the fight; the green of the irises ringing them was aflame. And they were intent on you, as if gauging something you couldn’t discern through the rush. Taking inventory. Paying attention.

Then Aloy—beholding your first trembling moment as the Sunhawk of the Hunters Lodge, somehow making it feel real before you could hoist the trophy in the sight of the other Hawks—had smiled. Just slightly, crooked, barely showing teeth. But there was a breath of pride glowing in her expression, one you hadn’t been genuinely granted since Tarkas met his end. It sent warm gratitude surging through you, prickling from chest to palms and then back again, sinking deeper as your gazes remained locked.

Through Aloy, all of this had been possible. And then, she left. It’s been weeks since she came to see what your indebted hands have built, thanks to her.)

In any case—regardless of the way you burned in pursuit of this goal since your first moments of return to Holy Meridian—the circumstances behind achieving it made your initial path to proficiency look like it was leading you off of the abrupt edge of an utterly unforgiving cliff. Utter commotion, until you paused—and let the pendant recognize something fundamental in you, the familiarity of your blood. When it does, it also breathed: _yes, you have seen this before, and there is more you will learn well_.

It filled your mouth with the keen taste of both reprieve and purpose. Made you realize that the latter outshines the former.

You had resolved to become the Sunhawk for yourself, for your father and brother and the brave men who died in the Massacre—and for the changing Sundom itself, one you’ve finally let yourself believe in again.

Now that you’ve become, you must _be._

And quickly, you realize that _being_ is very different from becoming.

One of the first scraps of wisdom you glean? Some hunting disputes are best settled with the heavy hand of authority. Others are best settled with a tankard in each.

That’s why Ligan finds you standing by the bar that late afternoon.

Two young (and particularly exasperating) noble fledglings had come bounding into the Lodge a bit earlier, caught up in what had to be an hours-old argument about a Longleg trophy (of all the ridiculous things!). You had intercepted immediately, scolding them for the uproar, reminding them of bylaw 2 of Section 3: they now stood on neutral ground and _you_ are the final appraiser of any trophy’s claiming and worth. Then you promptly ushered them to the bar to solve their asinine disagreement through the intervention of some Oseram brew. It’s been foolproof thus far: get them drunk enough that they move straight through their rancor to the slurred apologies, when they inevitably agree either on or who truly deserves the prize, or to toss the whole struggle aside. Plenty of screeching Longlegs under the Sun, after all. Dispute settled. You have the final say, but everyone is happier when you don’t have to intervene.

You have these two preening bungheads so brimming with drink and renewed goodwill that they’re leaning heavily on one other, each with his arm slung over the other’s shoulders, when you feel Ligan’s presence behind you.

“Sunhawk, a word?”

The music is already loud, and you’re admittedly a little distracted, restless. Your thoughts have been scattered all day, and are still meandering. The Lodge is growing rowdy early, with bubbling and spirited music tempo and voice-echoes. It’s been this way all through the city since Prince Itamen returned—most are taking it as a sign of trouble ending. While you’re hopeful, life has kept you skeptical. Rumor has it that King Avad’s _Nora savior_ was also on the boat that carried the prince across the Daybrink. You don’t doubt that at all, but if she was...she didn’t make the trek from Brightmarket to the Lodge for a visit. Which is alright. Aloy has her path, and so do you. She’s off on her next adventure. You’re here, where you should be. Where you wanted to be. This is what you wanted.

You commissioned a child-sized bow to be presented to Itamen as a gift from the Hawks of the Lodge (apparently the boy has yet to grow into his bravery).

And in this busy instant, the bartender’s handing you two fresh and very full flagons of Scrappersap. So though it’s somewhat odd for Ligan to approach you like this, nothing specific in his voice implies undue urgency, and you don’t immediately face him.

“Another hunter returning? I’ll receive them soon. If they were patient enough to make a clean kill and strip a worthwhile trophy, they can handle waiting to have my full attention,” you tell him without looking, instead handing the drinks to your tipsy friends with a tight-lipped smile. They, of course, accept the further offering with flush-cheeked and dizzy grins.

“Talanah.”

Your name breaks through the racket of both sound and of thought; your name makes you turn. And when you do, the bones of your spine lock into a straight line, because Ligan’s ever-calm tone doesn’t match his expression. His apprehension is tenuous, easy to miss—the corners of his drawn-thin mouth turned down, the focused tightness in his eyes, the creases in his brow beneath his headpiece looking just a bit more prominent than usual—but to you, it’s a call to attention.

“This guest,” he continues, lowering his voice and sharpening his gaze to a persuasive point, “is one you’ll want to receive without delay.”

A flash of cold fleets through your veins and leaves you with the powerful inclination to believe him. You think of the faceless man from long ago and try not to balk.

“Excuse me,” you say to the fledglings, taking care to keep your own voice even too. “We’ll pick up this riveting talk of Longlegs later. Keep enjoying the brew. But next round, the drinks start going on _your_ tabs.”

With the overblown and sloppy enthusiasm of inebriation, they raise their flagons high at your back as you turn and fall into step with Ligan.

“To the hunt!”

“To the Sunhawk!”

Their voices fade into the din before you can hear them.

* * *

In the moments that follow, your mind hastily gathers up its knowledge of Erend Vanguardsman—you know his name, you know some of his deeds, you know some relative inconsequentialities, but you’ve never actually clasped arms with him. And right now, it might benefit you to scrape up as much meager preparedness as you can.

The man is the new captain of Sun-King Avad’s steel-ringed Vanguard, and he’s already proven his mettle many times over. Proud Oseram: bold, burly, built like stone. A true hero of the Liberation—and though his memory might place your name in the same setting, the two of you were never adjoined, only staged in periphery. The Freebooters were the cavalry who blasted the main gates; you and your compatriots rolled through the chaotic streets, sending arrow after deadly arrow out of smoke and shadow.

You know he’s mourning a sibling and mentor as one, and that cuts incredibly close.

You’ve heard all about his distinctive and meticulously-kept hair, both atop his head and on his face, which he reveals in removing his helmet.

His proclivity for drink precedes him with resounding emphasis.

And finally, you know of his close fellowship with Aloy of ( _despite_ , you know better, know more than others, you remind yourself of this and your hands flood with muted heat) the Nora.

The item of chief importance among all you _don’t_ know about him? The reason why he’s here at the Hunters Lodge, looking tenser than any Vanguard Captain should, asking you to speak privately.

“Just so we’re not overhead, yeah? Sometimes you Carja have a hard time keeping your traps shut.” A pause, a creaking-leather shrug. “No offense.”

None taken. After all, he’s far from wrong.

You grant his simple request without deliberation. The noisy revelers congregated near the band and the bar cleave a path as you lead him towards the rear of the Lodge. Some watch the two of you proceed with curious eyes, ravenous for gossip. Others make a discreet effort to cover their faces with hands or flagons or turkey legs, spooked by the entrance of any authority. You choose to ignore both. It’s better to ignore both. But you do signal to the bartender as you pass. A flick of your chin speaks in shades of subtlety— _two drinks, follow_.

The back of the lower level near the fireplace is somehow and blessedly empty, by the Sun. Panel dividers all around will shroud you from view. Your voices will fall away against the twanging braumdrum. It must be adequate because the Captain sits; you follow suit, facing him from across the low table. And half a heartbeat later, when the barkeep comes by with your tankards, Erend Vangardsman looks at the offering like he’s considering it, really, _really_ considering it—and then declines, exhaling slowly, just a wave of a gauntleted hand. So, you forgo yours too with a grateful and contrite smile.

Then, when you’re finally fully alone, he speaks.

“Thanks for accommodating me, Sunhawk."

“Talanah,” you correct him, not of mind to take part in the filigreed dance of nobility. It’s useless here. And it seems that he agrees, because his armor-bulked shoulders relax, but only in the slightest way.

“Noted. Good. Erend, then.” He gives you a flickering, uneasy smile. “His Radiance has us trained to stick to titles when we’re on official business. Feels stiff using ‘em constantly. It’s like you can’t swing a stick without whacking a silken-assed noble around here. But he gets a little pissed in that quiet, _royal_ way if we don’t.”

On another day, you might have been amused by what he just described: the gentle Sun-King heaving out a long-wearied sigh at his mighty guards as they brush off one of his more flippant orders. But not today. Another part of his explanation has already laid claim to your diligence, sinking in like a cleverly-tossed grappling hook.

“Official business, then?” You lean in, elbows on knees, lips pursed, with a well-practiced unassuming voice. “If some new machine was terrorizing the Sundom, I’d be well-aware of it by now. So I hope this isn’t about anything untoward from my members or frequenters. I assure you that I’ve been trying to clean up the Lodge’s principles, to match both his Luminance’s standards and my own.”

“Ah, no, nothing like that at all,” he replies, shaking his head. “As far as business goes, I guess you could say this visit is...officially unofficial.”

“Officially unofficial.” Your reiteration is deadpan.

“Yeah, that.”

It clarifies exactly nothing. So you stare at him, hackles certainly raised but kept in sightless check, waiting for him to go on. When he does, it’s after another pause—he rubs at his face with his palm and strokes his mustache, gray eyes mired in reluctant contemplation. As though he has a _long_ story to tell and can’t decide if he wants to start at the very beginning or dive straight for its critical marrow.

Seems like the former wins.

“Like you can probably imagine, we’ve been getting defectors from Sunfall like Glinthawks to a junk heap. Especially since their little Sun-Prince deserted them. The Sun-King sends his personal appreciation for the bow, by the way. Kid likes to hold it, but still refuses to loose any arrows. We’re working on it. Anyway,” he says, “we have a whole refugee procedure now—a detachment posted at Brightmarket to meet them when they arrive. The civilians, they usually come across in pretty bad shape. So we ease back, point them towards aid, and that’s the end of it. The soldiers, though. When we see their tattoos we take them into...very gentle custody. Just let ‘em sweat it out for a bit in loose shackles, a little easy information-harvesting, you know? Nothing even close to brutal. Avad wouldn’t stand for that.”

You nod your silent understanding. There’s a break in the line. A chasm, really. The Fourteenth is not the Thirteenth. It still staggers you how the son can be so unlike the father.

“Most of them don’t even need encouragement. They’re so glad to be back on this side of the Sundom that they tell us pretty much anything we ask...we gave one man a banana and he burst into tears.” Erend stops, sighs. “Paints a damn clear picture of the state of things beyond the Rustwash. We get plenty from our spies, and from Avad’s new military advisor, but each new story is like a tired hammer whacking an already-driven nail.”

The thing is—you need no help imagining what it must be like to be in Sunfall, ensnared in the dying tendrils of the old regime. You’ve been in that grip before, smothered and pinned; their stricture is still etched into your skin. Thorns in your mouth, strangling your lungs, stripped of everything that meant anything, forcing you to claw your way out of the barrenness. It’s a horrible way to feel connected to so many others, then and now, raging fire and its smoldering remnants alike, this madness of Jiran. It rushes through you, insistent, but you bite it back and simply say:

“May they walk in our true Light now. The Sun shines on your deeds—all that you’re doing for those people.”

Another shrug. “Your blessing’s wasted on me. I haven’t done much of anything.” And Erend Vanguardsman must be a smart man, because he realizes it’s time to get to the heart of the matter. “Our guys pulled one theirs out of the Daybrink this morning. As in, bodily. Guy swam all night across the damned lake. And he’s already talking before he’s done dripping—pleading for mercy, desperate to see his sister and niece. Held off on the shackles for him. So of course the first thing they ask him is about his dramatic mode of arrival. Said he didn’t have time to arrange anything else, because he took advantage of some mayhem at the Citadel yesterday. He ran when he could.”

His words halt, then, interrupted by a heavy breath, an apologetic notch in his brow.

“This part is something our spies have told us, and we’ve been keeping it quiet for a while. Not out of deception, but because it’s still...fresh, for far too many folks. Myself among them,” he admits. “In Sunfall, they never gave up the sacrificial rites in the Sun-Ring.”

The disclosure isn’t surprising. In fact, as a statement, its obviousness is nearly absurd. But knowledge is different from faraway assumptions. Hearing it still makes you go as rigid as the steel of Erend’s armor—a reflexive action to keep the phantoms from stealing in. Because there are some things righteous anger can’t reset. When it’s spent and wisps away, only the rawness remains. Changing the few things you can still leaves you with the wreckage of all you can’t. And though they’re all remembered now, every single day—moonlit candles left burning into eternity, warding off their own tiny patch of night—they’re also missed.

(The stalwart act of repairing and exhuming is not full healing, and neither of those is forgetting. _This is the cycle of things_.)

You breathe and touch the Sunhawk pendant—and remember how your father would do the same—before you say, “Awful.”

There are plenty of other words to capture the sense of it. Words also fail. No more will leave your throat.

In the quiet, Erend clears his.

“So, he reported on the havoc.” A sudden nameless restraint grips his words. An itch in his bearing. There’s more trying to come out than he’ll allow. “Yesterday’s sacrifice gave them...some trouble. Completely destroyed their rigging, made a joke of their Behemoth. Challenged the Stacker of Corpses himself. Then busted out of there with help from outside. Totally unheard of. The Shadow Carja sent immediate pursuit eastward, and our new soggy friend managed to break away in the commotion. Aside from their soldiers, their daily bounty list probably has a mighty hefty addition.”

Even though the details are lacking, their fragments begin slipping into cohesion. The Vanguard Captain’s intention here, bathed in gradual illumination.

“Their troublesome captive is of importance to our side,” you say, and it’s not a question.

“The Sunhawk’s got some brains. Not that I had a doubt.” Erend flashes you a close-lipped grin that’s anything but boisterous. It doesn’t come close to touching his eyes. “Yeah. Unless we’ve got the description mistaken—and I’d be damned if that’s the case—you’re right. Sun-King Avad has a vested interest in bringing this asset back here, alive and unharmed. He’d send us, but if we cross that territorial line, even disguised, and get found out? Fun’s over, especially after the Itamen thing. Cease-fire, up in smoke.” He mimics an explosion with his mouth and hands. “And while we’d crush them, every death would be a Carja death. So that’s where your fine establishment comes in. We’re...looking to outsource tracking and protective escort.”

At last, there’s the core of it. A contract, a bounty. Pure normalcy. Something inside of you goes slack with relief, and the release makes you feel exhausted. You definitely don’t have time for that—the rest of another long day remains. And looks like the further toil begins with negotiating this issue. Semantics against semantics. Section Four of the bylaws ricochets into your awareness. This happens too often nowadays. You really need to get out on a hunt. Hit something, make it spark.

“Captain. Erend,” you say with a newfound capacity for a soft and polite half-smile, “far would it be for me to refuse a request from the Sun-King. And a hunt in the service of others is blessed by the Sun—” (great, now you’re spontaneously reciting the bylaws too) “—but I’m not certain I can sanction this as a contract for the Lodge. We’re machine hunters, not bounty hunters.” For you, the past makes that a complicated truth, but a truth nonetheless. Your Hawks are adept and decorated, but there’s an entire skill set lacking for this request. They’re used to glory and fanfare, to pomp and braggery and trophy rank, not becoming faceless. Not like you are. “For all the changes, it’s not something I’m willing to set as a precedent. So while I appreciate your confidence in us, I must offer you and his Radiance my apologies...and then promise that I’ll turn a blind eye as you leave, just in case you want to solicit any of my patrons directly.”

You wink, but Erend doesn’t react. At least, not in the way you expect him to. His face changes, but to deliver neither acceptance nor disappointment. No, it’s a sort of strained resignation. His eyes narrow, his brow furrows, he frowns. He runs a gloved hand through the ruffled strip of hair left on his close-cropped head. He’s contending with something left hidden in the silence.

“There’s more to it than you’re saying,” you murmur, measuring your words carefully, answering your own unspoken question. You go tense again without realizing.

Erend holds your gaze for one, two, three long seconds, consumed by that same conflicted consideration he gave the Scrappersap. Then, bend and break. He speaks, low of voice, barely over the everyday rabble that feels so far away from the two of you.

“Nothing gets past you, huh?” Another humorless laugh. “You’re right, there is. I’ve had trouble saying it because I don’t want it to be true. But it is true, so I guess I need to get on with it. Look, Talanah. Avad isn’t the only one invested in bringing her back—I’m right with him. And I have a feeling the same’ll be true for you.”

Stillness, all around. Then unseen storm.

He doesn’t need to say another word, another syllable. Because all at once, you know. You know. You know. The cycle whirls around you, casts everything into echo. The horizon shatters with an upheaval of violent percussive rhythm, of hoarse shout and skyward fist, of hammering heart and blood-rush. The drums. The same as always, they jolt in. You know. You’ve known before. You should have known now.

The rest of what he has to say ensures that you _really_ know, all hammer, and you, a begging-mercy nail.

“The defector said the one pursued is a Nora, crowned with braided flame, who raced out of the Sun-Ring on a tamed Strider’s back.”

And then Erend Vaguardsman proves his tact isn’t just a standing order from his king. He quickly averts his eyes as your composure dares to dismantle in ways that surprise you, ways you couldn’t have prepared for. In your mouth—reprieve and purpose, both replaced by ash. A surge of cold dread tries to send you hurtling to your feet. White-knuckled, you resist it. But your face disobeys. It twitches, then crumples. Lip bitten. Tongue curling. Hide it. Unbidden images rise up and take hold, seizing your control, cracking armor beyond the set you’re wearing.

 _Regard, child_.

Aloy, standing in the center of Basadid’s Sun-Ring—snarling in defiance amidst the deafening shouts of the spectators starving for food, starving for slaughter, lifting their pleading and riled voices to a defiled and false Sun—

Aloy, climbing atop a frenzied Behemoth and _with one well-placed spear_ —(you only know the story as Ligan told it to you, once and then never again)—

Aloy, hunted down by soldiers, no, _Kestrels_ , subdued and dragged back to perdition—you’ve noticed that scar on her neck, gazed at it for longer than you’d confess, wondering, and there’s no real reason for you to be thinking of it now, but you are—

Aloy, battle-thrilled, wild-eyed, but smiling at you—shimmering calm, great beams from above catching on green—that smudge on her sunlight-speckled cheek, and now you reaching out to wipe it away, new friction rasping at the contours of your mind—

And the angry, frantic, thundering drums escalate from somewhere within, somewhere you’ve shoved them down and down and down and _down_ , until they refuse to be ignored.

You wince and cover your ears to try and quiet them. It’s a small and cautious motion, but still a mark of altogether forgetting yourself, forgetting that you’re no longer lost and faceless. For all their effort, your invisibly shaking, futile hands don’t make a damned bit of difference.

* * *

They never made a difference against the pounding drums.

It was the drums that made you loathe the Sun-Ring, long before the Massacre. You were so small and the sound they made was enormous. The vibrations would swallow you whole, and your head would feel too full. They rattled your skull, your ribs, thrumming into the depths of your chest—they took the rhythm of your heartbeat hostage and making it feel like you might never get it back. Like you’d become something other than you. Made you feel like you could disappear entirely into the clamor. Tiny palms pressed against tiny ears provided no defense. So you had to learn to sit with the fear and the feeling of overload until it began to slowly diminish, and the unshed tears stopped stinging your eyes. As you grew bigger, the time it took to grit yourself to _settled_ became smaller, but it never disappeared. The first strike always made you jump in your seat, before the rest melded with the sounds of the eager crowd and the mechanical braying of machines.

You were a young child, then, knee-high to a Watcher, almost sharing your nativity with that of Jiran’s reign. The Sun-Ring’s sole purpose was sport. Excitement and delight. An astonishing exhibition of prowess and mastery that all thought could only be displayed by those of the purest Carja blood. The exhilarating hunt: the noblest pursuit in the Sundom, all strength and honor, on candescent display. You remember the Hawks who battled and braved during those years—some of their names still live on your tongue, recited with every ending day.

Khuvam. Gravid. Sirav. Ghalidid. Yusalin. Ligan.

And your father—already the Sunhawk before Brativin brought him his other title—was the grandest marvel. He was flawless grace and finesse. Every moment was agile, every trick shot he made (never missed) with his bow brought thrill. In the midst of felling Scrappers, Broadheads, Lancehorns, Tramplers, _anything_ , he’d take a deliberate pause, armor gleaming under the gladdened Sun. Then he’d turn to smile and wink at you, your brother, and your mother—and the multitudes gathered would roar with enthusiastic chants of his name, the one he shared with you. _Khane Padish_ , resounding, repeat. It made you feel proud and it made you feel scared, and that was the first time you learned that those could exist beside one another.

( _That same chant a decade later, distorted, irate, too far away, you can’t reach, you ran and they—_ )

Inevitably there would be moments when the _scared_ would overpower the _proud_. When it did, you’d make Brativin hold your hand. A boy of twelve years, with three Full Suns already pinned smugly to his silks, he was too well-mannered to yank his away in plain view...but later, at home, he’d tease you relentlessly for it, sneering and calling you a baby again and again until your mother made him stop and apologize.

You’d worry, sometimes, about the machines in the Ring. You’d comment to your father that they looked sad, and frightened. Brativin, of course, picked up the chorus of _baby_ again, and this time your father would scold him before taking your hand. His dwarfed yours.

“They might be afraid, but we have no way of knowing,” he would say, with a pointed look at your brother. And with every look the three of you three ever shared, the three of you always looked so much alike. “The hunt protects and preserves. The hunt makes us Carja.”

He’d tell you he thanked every single one of them in quiet prayer, for everything they once did under the Sun, and everything their bodies would now provide. He meant it.

(And you still do the same. You both thanked and tried to forgive Redmaw with unabashed and unbridled tears, later, finding a private spot of Sun in which you could lift your chin and let the catharsis dry on your cheeks.)

Your father was nothing if not thorough. He resolved to prove this to you. He began to teach you the wonder of hunt. Damn the notions that women couldn't partake.

(Your mother sighed her constant disapproval but packed your rations with his and Brativin’s regardless.)

Every bit of it was difficult. The unrelenting bowstring sliced at your tender fingers and the spear made your shoulders tired. But every movement left you teeming with the uncontainable notion connection, and you eagerly drank it to the final drop. Determined sweat and labored toil turned your weapons into extensions of your body, every bit as essential as limbs, eyes. You grew in capability every day.

Even though you were born a girl, it made you feel worthy of your name. It made you feel Carja. It made you feel better.

Until that humid summer morning, when smoke and ash billowed in the northeast. A rupture where there was once a distant mountain, so much dust bleeding into the clear sky. An unreadable omen that shifted all things. Your life, caught up in its windswept drifting.

(You remember it with surreal clarity. It was the eight years to the day since the High Sun-Priest held you up, newborn and wailing, to your first crowning daybreak. You watched the debris rise as you sat on the roof of the servants’ house at your family estate, cross-legged, muscles tired from the usually-forbidden climb. Everyone else was fretting, and the celebration of your birth was momentarily forgotten in the turmoil. That didn’t matter to you. You were too transfixed to care, utterly calm, daytime stars swimming in your gaze as you witnessed that which was not sky becoming one with it. _By the Sun_ , you whispered to yourself. But though the Sun was bright that morning, it had claim to none of your attention. Just the smoke, how it reached for you across the heavy-aired expanse, and the unexplainable sweet desire you felt deep in your throat to look and look and _look_ at it until it made spots in your vision just the same.)

Your father began to return from Hawks’ hunts wearing bloodied bandages, bearing more gouges in his armor, once lamenting a broken-beyond-repair spear—cleaved and gnawed by a Snapmaw’s jaw. Furious machines. Dangerous machines. And King Jiran, taken by the same whip of agitation, his speeches turned to convulsion and delivered with more spit—the Speaker for the Sun, in a voice you’d never heard. The Sun-Ring, too, different. Singularly menacing. No more dazzling performances by the Hawks of the Lodge. Prisoners, first, then Carja slaves. Then the first of the Utaru—people who didn’t belong to you, subjected to your tribe’s desperation. All _people_. People stripped of their weapons and protection. People not celebrated, but caged and sacrificed, set upon by machines and torn to pieces in the matter of a few awful drumbeats.

The crowd would scream for more before the blood could even quench the parched ground. Unlike with the once-docile machines you used to worry about, you had to assume nothing here: it was plain to see that the people were afraid.

And you saw all of it. You had no choice. Your family was a branch of the Sun-Court and held seats of honor for every sacrifice. “Do not shield your eyes,” your father would warn the rest of you, in a voice that had grown hollow with the clear struggle of yielding. “This is the will of the Sun, to nurture and to scorch away. This is how we appease Him.”

The blood still lingers in your eyes because you obeyed. You never shielded them. But you still took Brativin’s hand, squeezing it until your fingers throbbed. During these times, your Thrush brother would neither pull away nor tease.

Eyes open at high noon. Eyes open at midnight, too. For if you closed them, you saw nothing but red machine light. You saw the carnage. You saw the anguished faces going glassy and still. Saw Jiran standing on his precipice, draped in cruel red vestments and watching with empty-eyed detachment, arms reaching up as if to embrace his holy forebear.

One night when sleep felt hopelessly far from you, you heard your mother and father embroiled in an emphatic but hushed conversation. It was piecemeal and interrupted—just portions of your father’s side, because his tempered-volume voice carried much farther than your mother’s.

 _I know—hate it too, but Jiran—course I think of the children, every moment I—obviously have children too—not call me heartless, please, you know that’s—agree with you, this Derangement—my love, my Light, I—what?—letter from him yesterday, sent one—caught, will be the—quietly—just me anymore, I have Brativin there to think of too—for Talanah, she’s still so young—steeping in his madness, I am trying to—watching the pace of his spiral—of my control—beyond that, nothing I say—by the Sun, Amavi, what would you have me do_?

Then, silence. Tense and grim. You counted the seconds of it, heartbeat roaring in your ears, left with a guilty quivering. Like your idle overhearing was an act of intrusion. You held your breath as they quietly entered your bedroom; a lump in your throat dueled with any apology you might make. So you pretended to be asleep instead.

With forced-closed eyes, you felt them touch your face. Your mother’s hand was soft, your father’s hand was callused. Both were tender. Both were warm. And though your stomach ached and your mouth tasted sour, you were taken by true sleep before you noticed them leaving.

(Half a year later, your mother was taken too—by fever, by a return to the Light from which you all came. For a time, you bent beneath a weight your shoulders were too small to carry. Your child’s grief made you just want her back. Your child’s grief carved out a home in your bones and grew with you. Now your grief makes you glad she did not have to withstand the terror left to come.)

* * *

It passes in guarded shudders, in muscle-locked fits and starts. Once you’re back to comprehension, judging by the signs, it’s been mere seconds. Years replayed in a few pulsebeat measures, crashing in all at once. They persist inside of you like that.

You come into the architecture of your body, to where it truly is. Incense and merriment and Erend Vanguardsman, tentatively allowing his eyes to fall on you once more. And you, weary. But here. Hardened, refilling your hollows with ends and divisions. Breathe, bite, swallow. Mastered motion: nock the arrow, sore bowstring fingers, send it sailing far away.

Your voice returns, too. Quiet and flat and betraying nothing.

You ask Erend how you would need to proceed. He tells you all he can.

“She can handle herself,” you say when he’s finished, still dry of mouth, apropos of nothing. An attempt at conviction for him, for yourself. You made sure of that fact before you tethered your name to hers in the annals, beyond the annals. It’s still true now. It needs to be true now.

And Erend says, “She can.”

You both sound certain in what you say. But something else ripples through the look you share. A breach made by the past you both knew.

No contract is drawn up and no honorarium is arranged. This is not a hunt. This is something else, something screaming with close essentiality. When you stand and solemnly clasp arms with him, it’s not done as the Sunhawk of the Hunters Lodge. It’s just as you: Talanah Khane Padish, a woman with a colossal debt to repay. A woman who, with permeating pride, witnessed an oath spoken clear in the face of arrogant spite.

A woman who, riveted by the other’s simple words, made her own integral oath in silence.

 _All the days to follow_ , sworn in double. (Drumbeats, again, but coming from within.)

 _All the days_ must mean _all the nights_ as well. There are two halves. The light streaming in through the windows has changed since you last noted it, threatening a final tip to crimson. New angled shadows stretch out on the polished wood floor and cut across Erend’s face as he gives you one final resolute nod, and then, things settled, takes his leave.

It’s you, now.

All the nights. You’re careening towards another, diving in, taken in whole. You’ll prepare and you’ll depart before this one falls.

You’ll hope you’re not already too late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Off we go! Truly hope you enjoyed, always down to hear what you think. Come find me on Twitter or [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/foibles-fables) to see me hootin' and hollerin' about this GAME and other general foolishness on the regular.


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